Dear Messrs. Kantor and Boehner:
Given your censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s video of ants crawling on a plastic crucifix with a wooden human figure meant to represent Jesus Christ, a literary character penned by numerous authors over several hundred years and now worshiped as God, and your threatening the Smithsonian’s funding if it did not comply with your wishes, I would like you to know about a similar threat to decency.
Right now, during the season when many children are passing through the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their way to see the Christmas tree, there are on view numerous Greek vases that depict men with erections, many of them cavorting with one another; paintings of children standing on their mothers’ laps and urinating; multiple depictions of mothers breast-feeding infants; scores of Oceanic wooden sculptures that depict male figures with enormous multiple penises; Rene Magritte’s painting showing only pudenda covered in a damp mat of dark pubic hair; Francis Boucher’s naked woman alone in bed rubbing her vulva on the bedsheets, and another holding a dog between her legs; Picasso’s woman with her anus directly at the center of the portrait; Papua New Guinean sculptures showing full-on vaginal penetration; multiple sculptures of figures in flagrant coitus in the Indian wing; Balthus’s young girl posed so that you can see her underpants, stained with red; Roman images of bestiality; a Greek vase made in the shape of a fully erect male member complete with curly pubic hair; a headdress effigy of a female with legs spread and vulva visible; Lorenzo Lotto’s painting of an ecstatic woman caressing her own breasts, squeezing flower petals between her legs, and being urinated on by a small child. I think that any public funding to the Met should be curtailed until all of these items have been looked into and removed.
Thank you,
Jerry Saltz
Senior Art Critic, New York Magazine
Perhaps the captain of the Baalbeck did see, through the dense fog, the bizarre shape jutting out of the water in the Thames River estuary, but it was already too late to stop the engines. Traveling at full speed, the Swedish freighter slammed into a group of strange steel hulks. The accident happened about six kilometers off the east coast of England in the late afternoon of March 1, 1953. The steel structures were boxes the size of two-story apartment buildings, each of them perched on massive concrete piers and connected by walkways. Guns were mounted on the roofs.
When the fog lifted the next day, the scope of the catastrophe was clearly visible from the shore. The outline of the British Army’s damaged Nore Fort was visible on the horizon, but now it was missing two of its seven towers.
Full article and more photos
“Early in the winter of 1981 I went up to see my friend Ernie in New York City and to see my all time favorite band do their hit single, “Driver’s Seat.” I saw them, then I went over to see Ernie who is a coroner’s assistant; he works in the morgue of New York City. He’s a wild guy, man, does lots of cool drugs. I knocked on his door and sat down, I said “Ernie, man, how you doin’?” and we partied some, man. And we’re partyin’ and Ernie pulls these kernels out of nowhere and he says “You know what these are?” and I say “They look like Cracker Jacks” and he says, “They’re Cracker Jacks from the stomach of John Lennon!” And I went “Wow, man” and we both looked at them for a while. Then we partied some more and Ernie passed out. I was layin’ there man and I was thinking about it and I couldn’t get those Lennon kernels out of my mind. So I finally snuck over to where he put ‘em down and I… ate one. Then I ate another one, man. And suddenly… suddenly I felt really monstrously beautiful, man, and I just like, began to sing… “Driver’s seat… wooahwoah… Driver’s seat.”
continue reading…
The last couple of months have been very intense. It somehow feels like I have been on an emotional rollercoaster. In times like these I miss the countryside where I grew up. I miss the texture, the land, the water, the light reflecting on the water, the woods, and accretion of centuries of (farm)buildings.
I feel the need to look for solitude in the deep end of the countryside, or to be on the road for one week, and maybe wonder the streets of Montenegro. Rent a car (and a friend who can drive one…), sleep in the car (as a tent might be freezing cold), just plain simple.
Visit Perast, a small town by the sea. Where the contrasting shades of light and dark, the motion of clouds and water can create much drama. Then maybe explore Kotor on foot. Kotor, a small city located on the Kotor Bay, which is known as the *Bride of Adriatic* b/c of it’s beauty. The ancient walled city of Kotor was built between the 14th and 16th century, and once you climb up the mountains I’ve heard it’s not visible anymore as it camouflages right into the mountains. Turquoise water sits still against the stony wall.
When news of the Underbelly Project’s subway station art show hit the Internet this weekend, subway lovers scrambled to adduce the site and quickly settled upon the South 4th Street subway shell. This is a six-track, IND station in South Williamsburg hidden from the public but identical to the station seen in the photos presented to the public by the Underbelly Project. To the uninitiated, this stop may sound like a phantom subway station. Isn’t the only 4th Street station at West 4th in Manhattan? What is this South 4th Street station? Where is it? And where do the trains that once serviced it go?
read on.
FOR DECADES in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art – President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
continue reading…
Awilda, also known as Alwilda, was a legendary female pirate.
Alwilda, the daughter of Synardus, a Gothic king, to deliver herself from the violence
imposed on her inclination, by a marriage with Alf, the son of Sygarus, king of Denmark,
embraced the life of a rover; and attired as a man, she embarked in a vessel of which the
crew was composed of other young women of tried courage, dressed in the same manner.
Among the first of her cruises, she landed at a place where a company of pirates were
bewailing the loss of their commander; and the strangers were so captivated with the air
and agreeable manners of Alwilda, that they unanimously chose her for their leader. By
this reinforcement she became so formidable, that Prince Alf was despatched to engage
her. She sustained his attacks with great courage and talent; but during a severe action in
the gulf of Finland, Alf boarded her vessel, and having killed the greatest part of her
crew, seized the captain, namely herself; whom nevertheless he knew not, because she
had a casque which covered her visage. The prince was agreeably surprised, on removing
the helmet, to recognize his beloved Alwilda; and it seems that his valor had now
recommended him to the fair princess, for he persuaded her to accept his hand, married
her on board, and then led her to partake of his wealth, and share his throne.
taken from The Pirate’s Own Book
